Some would say my work is very “negative”. I assure the quality of our products. Test the beejesus out of it. Make sure nothing is broken. Make sure that if something is broken, it’s isolated. I can go on for a long time.

One of my better managers once said that we actually have the best job in the software industry. We find a bug, it’s great. We don’t find a bug, we give an all-clear, it’s great. But underneath that second statement is a lot of sweat & some nerve-shaking decisions (read: risk management and cost-cutting).

Anyway, that’s my job, it’s me, it’s part of my life. I’m a software tester, and I love it.

I am pretty reasonable. I don’t go loggerheads with developers or management (okay I do gnash my teeth a lot). Experience taught me that there’s no point. At the end of the day, I am here to get my money at the end of the month. I am not here to fan anyone’s ego. Or be someone’s fall-guy. Eff you if you think that. And you’ll have a rude awakening if you think, I’m a pushover.

I guess most non-Pinoys I worked with, think I am a soft touch because of my mild demeanour. I wish I could tell them that’s not how my Filipino colleagues would describe me (or could I be mistaken? hmm). I do encounter attitudes but most are tolerable & I let them pass, so yes that’s probably why they would say I’m “nice”. But whenever someone pushes me a little too far, I can be like Wolverine and turn them into muttering brats.

In my second London job for example, there was this Irish “call-me-Dr” know-it-all. I’m not sure if I blogged about him in the past, but here goes. I reported a major crash on our Symbian application. Our phones were crashing with KERNEL-whatever errors and his code’s log weren’t sufficient. The problem was straightforward to reproduce & I allowed him some attempts to send it back to me with a lame “fix” and at least 3 “not reproducible”. The latter was a push to close and forget about it. I told him we can work in tandem & showed him the steps & voila! The crash. Then he stood up and said “Okay, reproduce it again and call me.”

“No! You sit down, watch what I’m doing & FIX your bug!“

I must have looked like the Furies. He can only manage a barely audible ‘ok’ & meekly sat down. When I finished, I slammed the phone in front of him so hard, I thought I’d broken it. The nerve of this PhD-wielding-weasel! He picked himself up & said something about going to work. That afternoon, I received a fix that actually worked.

London offices are open-planned, so yes my raised voice carried throughout the floor which houses the sales, marketing, HR, support, and dev teams. Everyone in the dev team were smiling and looking at our direction. My then manager gave me two thumbs up and later on in the pub bought me a pint. Then everyone gave their “horror” stories about the red-haired geek, apologies to good geeks out there. Well, let’s just say he wasn’t very popular.

Are you getting the picture?

Now, as in an hour ago, a developer whose component has been the weakest of our entire trading system, had the gall to tell me he “doesn’t have much time to look at the problem” because he’s busy! WTF?! I told him the bug (which is really at least 3 months old as it’s related to other failed fixes!) is with his dev manager & they will deal with it appropriately.

I am a software tester, not your “debugger”, jack—.

I wasn’t hot at all. In fact, he probably went away thinking “I showed her”. Thing is, I am the QA Manager, mate. Even before you gave me that attitude, your lack of, uhmm what’s the nicest word to use?, let’s say: your lack of focus has given me cause for concern for a while. I already had a 5-minute chat with your boss about my observation, albeit I didn’t pointedly say you’re “not good”. He did.

Okay that’s it. WHEW. It’s been a while since my last work-related post ah.

“I live to break your world”